The plan signaled to Mr. Netanyahu’s right-wing base that he is defying foreign pressure on Israel to leave Gaza and allow the establishment of a Palestinian state. But the vagueness of its wording signaled to the United States and other foreign powers pressing for Palestinian sovereignty that there is still room to maneuver.

To satisfy mainstream Israeli opinion, Mr. Netanyahu said he wanted to retain military control of both Gaza and the West Bank; subcontract the management of civilian affairs to Gazan administrators; and retain control of buffer zones lining Gaza’s borders with Egypt and Israel.

Mr. Netanyahu also didn’t explicitly refer to the issue of settlements to avoid angering his far-right coalition partners, who could collapse his government if he rules out resettling Gaza with Jews.

All of these approaches infuriated the Palestinian leadership, which quickly condemned the plan. They are also likely to heighten tensions with Israel’s foreign allies, including the United States, who want Israel to abandon the buffer zones; engage in a process toward the creation of a Palestinian state; and hand over control of Gaza to a revamped version of the Palestinian Authority, which administers parts of the West Bank.

But Mr. Netanyahu was also careful not to go too far. He included no new ideas, choosing instead to repackage proposals that he has presented several times before. Nor did he directly rule out any of the options promoted by the United States.

Mr. Netanyahu’s pledge to hand day-to-day administration to Gazan managers did not explicitly reject the idea that they could be directed by the Palestinian Authority in the West Bank.

“The administration of civilian affairs and the enforcement of public order will be based on local stakeholders with managerial experience” who are not “affiliated with countries or entities that support terrorism,” the position paper said, avoiding any mention of the Palestinian Authority while implicitly creating a challenge to its involvement.

The plan also rejected the idea of foreign countries unilaterally recognizing a Palestinian state, a move recently hinted at by Britain and France. But it did not directly dismiss the idea of Palestinian statehood altogether, even though Mr. Netanyahu has on other occasions rejected the concept.

The document even leaves open the possibility of “a permanent arrangement with the Palestinians,” which it says “will only be achieved through direct negotiation between the parties.”

By using such ambiguous language, analysts said, the plan buys Mr. Netanyahu time because it satisfies his base while giving foreign leaders hope that he could still change course before it is too late.

“It doesn’t ruin anyone’s plan,” said Nadav Strauchler, a political analyst and former strategist for Mr. Netanyahu. “It leaves a lot of options open and postpones a lot of decisions.”

“He is treading a thin line,” Mr. Strauchler said. “Think how many different eyes and audiences are reading this paper with different glasses.”

“It’s been longstanding U.S. policy under Republican and Democratic administrations alike that new settlements are counterproductive to reaching enduring peace,” he said. “They’re inconsistent with international law. Our administration maintains firm opposition to settlement expansion. And in our judgment, this only weakens — it doesn’t strengthen — Israel’s security.”

Mr. Blinken was in Argentina for meetings with the recently elected president, Javier Milei, and the foreign minister, Diana Mondino.

In Washington, John F. Kirby, a White House spokesman, reiterated that stance in comments to reporters. “This is a position that has been consistent over a range of Republican and Democratic administrations — if there’s an administration that is being inconsistent, it was the previous one,” he said.

State Department officials declined to say what actions, if any, the United States might take to hold Israeli settlers or the government legally accountable for the building of new settlements.

Over many years, settlements have proliferated across the West Bank, Palestinian territory that is occupied by Israel, without the United States pushing for any legal action. About 500,000 residents now live in the occupied West Bank and more than 200,000 in East Jerusalem.

In November 2019, President Trump’s secretary of state, Mike Pompeo, reversed four decades of U.S. policy by saying that settlements did not violate international law. State Department lawyers never issued a new legal determination that buttressed that policy change, and Mr. Blinken’s shift back to the old policy is consistent with a longstanding legal finding of the department.

Starting in 2021, when President Biden took office, diplomatic reporters asked State Department officials whether Mr. Blinken planned to reverse Mr. Pompeo’s move, but the officials each time said there was no change to policy.

Some State Department officials had grown uneasy last year over the sharp surge in acts of violence by extremist settlers. After the Oct. 7 attacks by Hamas, violence increased in the West Bank, and Mr. Biden and Mr. Blinken began denouncing the actions and the expansion of settlements.

On Friday afternoon, Jeremy Ben-Ami, the president of J Street, a liberal Jewish American advocacy group that tries to shape policy on Israel, praised Mr. Blinken’s announcement.

“Now, the administration must make clear that, particularly in light of the volatility of the current situation between Israelis and Palestinians, there must be no further expansion of the settlement enterprise,” he said in a statement. He added that the Biden administration should show it “will take further steps to enforce its view — and the view of the international community — that the creeping annexation of the West Bank must stop.”

Mr. Pompeo’s move in 2019 bolstered the position of Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu of Israel, who had vowed during two elections that year to annex the West Bank. Mr. Netanyahu’s new ruling coalition has several far-right ministers that support that direction, and it is those politicians who have helped Mr. Netanyahu stay in power despite the widespread criticism of him over his inability to protect Israel from the Oct. 7 attacks by Hamas and his moves to undermine the judiciary’s power.

On Thursday night, the office of one of those ministers, Mr. Smotrich, announced that an existing Israeli planning committee that oversees construction in the West Bank would be convened.

He said the committee would move ahead with plans for more than 3,000 housing units, most of them in Ma’ale Adumim, near the site of a Palestinian shooting attack earlier that same day. Mr. Smotrich’s office described the expansion of the settlement as an “appropriate Zionist response” to the attack.

“Let every terrorist plotting to harm us know that raising a hand against the citizens of Israel will be met with death, destruction, and the deepening of our eternal grip on the entire Land of Israel,” Mr. Smotrich said in a statement.

Mr. Smotrich’s office did not say when the committee would be convened, whether the housing units would be new homes or what stage of the planning process they were in.

Mr. Blinken also said he would withhold judgment on the postwar plan for Gaza that Mr. Netanyahu had begun to circulate among Israeli officials. Mr. Blinken said any plan has to align with three principles: Gaza should not be a base for terrorism; the Israeli government should not reoccupy Gaza; and the size of Gaza’s territory should not be reduced.

“There are certain basic principles that we set out many months ago,” he said, referring to the outcome of a diplomatic conclave in Tokyo, “that we feel are very important when it comes to Gaza’s future.”

Aaron Boxerman contributed reporting from Jerusalem.

— Edward Wong Reporting from Buenos Aires, while traveling across South America with U.S. Secretary of State Antony J. Blinken

“Such transfers are prohibited even if the exporting State does not intend the arms to be used in violation of the law — or does not know with certainty that they would be used in such a way — as long as there is a clear risk,” the statement said.

Israel has rejected allegations that it has committed war crimes in the operations it launched in Gaza after the Hamas-led attack on Oct. 7. It maintains it has tried to warn civilians in advance to leave areas being attacked and has targeted only civilian buildings being used by Hamas for military purposes.

But Israel has faced growing international condemnation for the tens of thousands of civilians, most of them women and children, who Gazan health officials say have been killed or injured since it began its invasion of Gaza in October.

Human rights experts have said that Israel’s use of powerful, imprecise bombs with a wide blast range in densely populated areas amounts to an indiscriminate and disproportionate attack on civilians that cannot be justified by military necessity under international law.

Hamas, the armed group that once controlled Gaza, is also accused of committing atrocities against Israeli civilians during cross-border attacks on Oct. 7. Israeli officials say Hamas-led raiders killed 1,200 people and took 250 hostage.

Multiple news organizations have reported allegations of sexual violence during the attack, and The New York Times in late December published a monthslong investigation that included accounts from several eyewitnesses who said they saw women being sexually assaulted and killed.

A report released by the U.N.’s human rights chief, Volker Türk, later on Friday found that all parties in the conflict had committed “clear violations of international humanitarian law, including possible war crimes.”

He urged governments to use their influence to stop, and not to enable, violations of international law, and also called for an independent investigation to determine other potential violations of international law.

The experts called for Israel’s leading arms suppliers, the United States and Germany, to halt military aid, along with Britain, France, Canada and Australia. Belgium, Italy, the Netherlands and Spain have already decided to suspend arms transfers to Israel.

The United States supplies the most military aid to Israel, more than $3 billion, which accounts for about two-thirds of Israel’s arms imports.

It also maintains large weapons stockpiles in Israel, which the United States has allowed the Israeli military to draw from.

President Biden has shown no sign of changing course despite recently characterizing Israel’s military response in Gaza as “over the top” and receiving sharp criticism from within his administration and skepticism from allies in Europe.

Asked about the U.N. experts’ recommendations, a State Department spokesperson said the United States supported Israel’s right to self-defense and that U.S. officials had made clear that Israel must comply with international humanitarian law, including taking steps to minimize harm to civilians.

Earlier this month, the European Union’s top diplomat, Josep Borrell Fontelles, responded to President Biden’s stated concern over the immense civilian suffering, saying that “if you believe that too many people are being killed, maybe you should provide less arms.”

His comments echoed wider European calls for a halt to arms sales to Israel. A Dutch court this month ordered the Netherlands to block shipments to Israel of F-35 jet fighter parts from American-owned warehouses. Judges rejected the government’s argument that the aircraft were essential for Israel’s security and said there was a “clear risk the exported F-35 parts are used in serious violations of international humanitarian law.”

Britain continues to allow arms sales to Israel, one of its close allies, but is under pressure to change its policy as a signatory of the Arms Trade Treaty, which says that states should not supply arms that might be used to commit genocide or crimes against humanity.

The Foreign and Commonwealth Office, according to documents produced in court proceedings earlier this year, was unable to conclude that Israeli operations in Gaza complied with international humanitarian law, and British government ministers have warned Israel against an assault on Rafah.

Adam Sella contributed reporting.

Mr. Netanyahu released his plan on the day that Israeli, Qatari, U.S. and Egyptian officials were set to meet in Paris in an effort to advance a deal for a cease-fire and the release of hostages captured by Hamas and its allies in their Oct. 7 attacks. While Israeli officials have indicated that they are open to making a deal to pause fighting and free captives, they have steadfastly rejected pressure to move toward a permanent cease-fire, insisting that they are prepared to wage a protracted campaign to destroy Hamas.

Mr. Netanyahu’s document is in effect a position paper that would need to be adopted by the government, though there is no timeline yet for such discussions.

It envisions the creation of an Israeli-controlled buffer zone along the length of Gaza’s border with Egypt, a move that risks inflaming tensions with the Egyptian government. That aspect of the plan would require Israel to invade Rafah, the southernmost city of Gaza, where most Gazans are currently sheltering, risking their mass displacement onto Egyptian territory, an outcome that Egypt has repeatedly warned against.

The plan also says Israel will seek to retain control over a sliver of land inside Gaza along the Israeli border, where its military is systematically demolishing thousands of buildings in order to create another buffer zone. Israel’s intention is to make it harder for militants in Gaza to repeat a raid like that of Oct. 7, in which Israeli officials say some 1,200 people were killed, although the United States and others have spoken out against any effort to reduce the size of Gaza.

The plan was circulated to cabinet ministers and journalists in the early hours of Friday morning. Though Mr. Netanyahu has laid out most of the proposals in public statements, this is the first time that he has collected them in a single document.

The plan does not say whether Israeli settlers would be allowed to re-establish communities on Gazan soil, as Mr. Netanyahu’s right-wing supporters are pushing for. A senior government official, speaking on condition of anonymity to discuss a matter that puts the prime minister at odds with his base, said that there were no plans to resettle Gaza with Jews, but declined to say so on the record, leaving Mr. Netanyahu with room for maneuver in the future.

Israel dismantled its settlements in Gaza in 2005, while maintaining control over its airspace, access to the sea, population registry and telecommunication networks.

Other parts of the plan include:

• Handing administrative control to “local stakeholders with managerial experience” who are “not affiliated with countries or entities that support terrorism.” The reference to terrorism aims to exclude anyone who Israel says has connections to Hamas. And while the document does not explicitly mention the Palestinian Authority, the body that administers parts of the Israeli-occupied West Bank, the reference to local residents implicitly rules out the involvement of the authority’s leadership in the postwar set-up — a position that is at odds with that of the Biden administration.

• The dismantling of UNRWA, the main U.N. agency operating in Gaza. Israel has accused 30 UNRWA workers of participating in the Oct. 7 attack. UNRWA’s leaders say the agency tries to ensure its 13,000 employees in Gaza uphold standards of neutrality, but they say it is not possible to track the private allegiances of all its employees.

• The overhaul of the Gazan education and welfare systems. Israel says schools and other public institutions in Gaza foment extremism.

• Opposing foreign recognition of a Palestinian state. The plan says that a final resolution to the Israeli-Palestinian conflict can only be achieved through bilateral talks between the two sides — an implicit rejection of hints by countries including Britain and France that they could unilaterally recognize a Palestinian state. Mr. Netanyahu has previously rejected the concept of an independent Palestinian state, but his plan released on Friday did not explicitly rule it out.

Johnatan Reiss and Rawan Sheikh Ahmad contributed reporting.

Palestinian statehood

The Biden administration and Arab states have called for both Gaza and the occupied West Bank to become part of a future Palestinian state alongside Israel, arguing that decades of Israeli-Palestinian conflict can only be resolved with an eventual two-state solution.

But Mr. Netanyahu’s plans appear to rule out a sovereign Palestinian state in the near term, saying that Israel would indefinitely maintain military control across “all of the territory west of the Jordan” river, including the enclave. It does not explicitly rule out a Palestinian state, but its wording would make an independent territory including Gaza and the Israeli-occupied West Bank all but impossible for the foreseeable future.

Gaza’s border with Egypt

Mr. Netanyahu’s framework calls for sealing off Gaza’s border with Egypt — the territory’s only crossing not controlled by Israel — in order to prevent what it described as cross-border smuggling. It would be done in coordination with Egypt and with the backing of the United States, his proposal said.

But it was not clear whether the Biden administration would support such a move. And it would likely ratchet up tensions with Egypt: The government in Cairo has called Israeli threats to send troops into a so-called buffer zone separating Gaza from the Egyptian-controlled Sinai Desert “a serious threat to Egyptian-Israeli relations.”

Buffer zone

The framework envisions a “security space” inside Gaza along the border with Israel, in order to prevent another raid like the one on Oct. 7, when Hamas-led assailants crossed the border and killed some 1,200 people in Israel, according to Israeli officials. Israeli forces have been clearing out the area, demolishing scores of homes and leveling factories, drawing international condemnation.

One United Nations expert has said that the systematic demolition of Palestinian homes could constitute a war crime. The United States has rejected any permanent reduction in the size of Gaza’s territory, although it has signaled that it might support a temporary buffer zone, for example to allow displaced Israelis to return to border communities. Mr. Netanyahu said that the zone should last “as long as the security need exists.”

The Palestinian Authority

The Biden administration has called for a “revitalized” Palestinian Authority — run by aging leader Mahmoud Abbas — to take the reins in Gaza after an Israeli withdrawal. The Palestinian body administers some areas of the Israeli-occupied West Bank.

Mr. Netanyahu’s proposal would instead see civilian administrative control in Gaza handed to “local stakeholders with managerial experience” who are “not affiliated with countries or entities that support terrorism.” That likely rules out Mr. Abbas’s government in its current form, which Mr. Netanyahu has previously criticized in identical terms.

Absent new funding, UNRWA, the largest aid agency on the ground in Gaza, says that its reserves will be gone by March, even as aid groups warn that Gaza is on the verge of famine.

“I fear we are on the edge of a monumental disaster with grave implications for regional peace, security and human rights,” Philippe Lazzarini, UNRWA’s commissioner general, wrote in a letter to the president of the U.N. General Assembly on Thursday.

Fewer aid trucks have entered Gaza this week than earlier in the year, when between 100 and 200 aid trucks were arriving on most days; both border crossings used for aid have frequently closed, sometimes because Israeli protesters have blocked a crossing. A total of 69 trucks entered on Tuesday and Wednesday, the agency said. It added that it is aiming for 500 per day to meet Gaza’s needs.

The International Court of Justice has ordered Israel to take immediate steps to facilitate the aid Gaza desperately needs, which UNRWA would normally play a central role in distributing. But Israeli officials have argued that its employees’ alleged links to Hamas fundamentally compromise the agency.

Israel has claimed that at least 10 percent of the agency’s staff is affiliated with Palestinian armed groups in Gaza. UNRWA’s leaders say the agency tries to ensure its 13,000 employees in Gaza uphold standards of neutrality, and that it shares the names of its staff with Israeli authorities, but they say it is not possible to track the private allegiances of all its employees.

A proposal for Gaza’s postwar future shared by Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu of Israel on Thursday night with members of his cabinet called for UNRWA to be closed in Gaza and replaced “with responsible international aid agencies.”

Israeli officials have taken a series of actions against UNRWA since the day the allegations became public, which was the same day the international court issued its aid order. Israeli officials have said they would revoke its tax exemptions and other privileges as a U.N. agency, limit visas for staff and suspend shipment of its goods in and out of Israel.

Mr. Lazzarini argued that Israel wanted to close UNRWA to make it impossible to create a Palestinian state alongside Israel. He cited a map that Mr. Netanyahu presented to the U.N. General Assembly in September that showed the Palestinian territories of Gaza and the West Bank within Israel’s borders.

Israel’s calls to close UNRWA are “not about the agency’s neutrality,” Mr. Lazzarini wrote in his letter to the president of the U.N. General Assembly. “UNRWA’s mandate to provide services to Palestine refugees within this same area is an obstacle to that map becoming a reality.”

Mr. Netanyahu has previously rejected the concept of an independent Palestinian state, though his plan released Friday did not explicitly rule it out. The plan does not say whether Israeli settlers would be allowed to move back to Gaza, from which they withdrew in 2005.

As part of Israel’s crackdown on UNRWA, Bezalel Smotrich, Israel’s finance minister, issued a directive not to transfer food aid for Gaza that has been lingering in the Israeli coastal city of Ashdod to the agency. U.N. officials will instead funnel the aid — 1,050 containers holding mostly flour — through the World Food Program, Jamie McGoldrick, a top U.N. humanitarian official in Jerusalem, told reporters on Thursday.

The Israeli authorities did not immediately confirm that the flour was cleared to enter Gaza. A spokeswoman for Israel’s customs office said U.N. shipments not intended for UNRWA were “being released as normal,” but declined to comment on specific cargo.

Mr. Smotrich’s office called the move a positive step toward further hobbling UNRWA’s ability to operate in Gaza. “If that’s true, then excellent,” said Eytan Fuld, a spokesman for Mr. Smotrich. “That was the goal.”

Most of the Houthi missile and drone attacks on ships in the Red Sea since the conflict in Israel started have not inflicted serious damage, but the attack on the Rubymar appeared to be one of the Houthis’ more serious to date. At least one missile struck the ship on Monday night, fired from a part of Yemen controlled by Houthi militants, the U.S. military said.

The Houthis, an Iran-backed group that has been targeting ships in what they call a campaign to pressure Israel to stop the war in Gaza, later claimed that they had sunk the ship. But satellite imagery and the ship’s operator confirmed that the Houthis had not.

After the Rubymar was hit on Monday night, its crew issued a distress call and then abandoned ship, the U.S. military's Central Command said in a statement. A coalition warship responded to the distress call, and the crew was taken to port by a merchant vessel in the area, the statement said.

The crew members were taken to Djibouti by a vessel operated by a French shipping company and have since flown home, according to Mr. Khoury. Djibouti port officials said 24 crew members were on board: 11 Syrians, six Egyptians, three Indians and four Filipinos.

The port officials also said that the Rubymar was carrying nearly 22 metric tons — more than 48,000 pounds — of fertilizer that is classified as “high consequence dangerous goods” for its combustibility risk by the International Maritime Organization, the U.N. body that regulates global shipping. The Blue Fleet Group did not comment about the ship’s cargo.

The Rubymar, a bulk carrier sailing with a Belize flag, is owned by Golden Adventure Shipping, a company registered in the Marshall Islands, Mr. Khoury said. The Blue Fleet Group is based out of Athens.

Since the Houthis began attacking ships in the Red Sea, a coalition of countries, including the United States and Britain, have brought naval forces to bear to defend vessels and retaliate. But the attacks have persisted against ships flying a range of flags.

The U.S.-led coalition has repeatedly struck missiles and launchers in Yemen and intercepted drones and missiles, but so far it has failed to halt the Houthi attacks.

On Thursday, the U.S. Central Command said that it conducted “self-defense strikes” against four Iranian-backed Houthi drones and two missiles that were prepared to launch from Houthi-controlled parts of Yemen. On Friday, the military said it shot down three more Houthi drones near “several commercial ships operating in the Red Sea,” adding that there was no damage to the ships.

Riley Mellen contributed reporting.

Qatar and Egypt have been acting as intermediaries between Israel and Hamas, which do not negotiate directly.

The talks come a day after President Biden’s Mideast envoy met with Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu and other top officials in Israel, part of a flurry of efforts to negotiate the release of hostages and a pause in the fighting. According to Israeli officials, about 100 hostages are still being held in Gaza. At least 30 others there are dead, officials believe.

On Tuesday, Hamas said that a delegation led by Ismail Haniyeh was in Cairo to meet with Egyptian officials to discuss efforts to end the war. On Thursday, Hamas issued a statement saying that Mr. Haniyeh had met with the Egyptian intelligence chief and aides, and had concluded his visit. The statement said that among the topics those talks addressed were ending the war, the return of displaced people to their homes, humanitarian aid, swapping hostages for Palestinian prisoners, and “what the occupation is planning at al-Aqsa Mosque” during Ramadan.

Efforts to secure a cease-fire deal have taken on greater urgency as the death toll from four months of war in the Gaza Strip nears 30,000 Palestinians, according to health officials there, and as Israel’s stated plan to invade Gaza’s southernmost city, Rafah, raises international alarm.

The talks had appeared to stall last week, after discussions held in Cairo failed to reach a breakthrough. Mr. Netanyahu withdrew his negotiators, accusing Hamas of refusing to budge on what he called “ludicrous” demands and pledged to press on with Israel’s offensive.

But on Wednesday night, Benny Gantz, a member of Israel’s war cabinet, said that there had been momentum on a new draft of a deal that indicated a “possibility to advance.”

And on Thursday, a White House official said that President Biden’s Middle East coordinator, Brett McGurk, had held “constructive” meetings in Israel with Mr. Netanyahu; Yoav Gallant, the Israeli defense minister; and other members of Israel’s war cabinet.

“The initial indications we’re getting from Brett is these discussions are going well,” said the official, John Kirby, a spokesman for the National Security Council. He also said that Mr. McGurk had spent a “good couple of hours” with Mr. Netanyahu.

Mr. McGurk was focused on whether negotiators could “cement a hostage deal for an extended pause to get all of those hostages home where they belong and get a reduction in the violence so that we can get more humanitarian assistance,” Mr. Kirby said.

Mr. Gallant, after meeting with Mr. McGurk on Thursday in Tel Aviv, said that Israel’s government would “expand the authority given to our hostage negotiators.”

One person briefed on the talks, speaking on condition of anonymity, said there were indications that both Hamas and Israel were willing to negotiate over an interim deal that could exchange 35 Israeli hostages who are either medically frail or older for an undetermined number of Palestinian prisoners.

Mr. Kirby said Mr. McGurk intended to press the Israeli war cabinet for its plans for its military operation in Rafah.

“Nothing has changed about our view that any operation in Rafah without due consideration and a credible executive plan for the safety and security of the more than a million Palestinians seeking refuge in Rafah would be a disaster,” Mr. Kirby said. “We would not support that.”

Earlier this week, the United States vetoed a U.N. Security Council resolution that would have called for an immediate cease-fire in Gaza. Israeli and U.S. officials have argued that an immediate cease-fire would allow Hamas to regroup and fortify in Gaza, and reduce the pressure for making a deal to release hostages held in the territory.

The United States has drafted a rival resolution, which is still in early stages of negotiations, that calls for a temporary humanitarian cease-fire “as soon as practicable,” and the release of hostages.

Adam Sella and Cassandra Vinograd contributed reporting.